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As community bank payment products become an increasingly central product line for small business customers, community banks are seeking new ways to connect with this important segment in today’s digitized environment. The following article offers tips to be mindful of when drafting your communications, educating customers about your offerings, and deploying performance marketing to track outreach effectiveness.
Understand Your Audience
In this time of economic uncertainty, it’s important to be mindful of the pressure small businesses are under to adapt quickly and creatively to stay afloat.
Before pushing your bank’s digital solutions to small business customers, consider the tone and word usage deployed to ensure your message conveys sincerity and empathy for the severe challenges they are dealing with and come from a place that seeks to understand—not self-serve.
Social media channels are a great place to initiate these conversations, whether through your public posts or direct messaging and because of their less formal nature, allows for more personal outreach This is something that can be difficult to achieve though other marketing tactics like paid advertising. These communications also help set the stage for ongoing conversations that reinforce your role as their partner in solving for their business problems, not just winning their business.
Generate Natural Interest in Your Payment Products
Sometimes a small business owner doesn’t know what they don’t know. Educating small businesses can be a great way of aligning with your customer’s pain points and potentially becoming part of their solution.
Webinars, white papers, and other digital education materials can show that your bank is going above and beyond to meet customer needs. The help and guidance you provide only enhances your credibility as a subject matter expert.
When customers pass through your content gate (completing a webinar registration form, submitting an email to download a white paper, etc.), that gateway can also help you qualify them as prospective customers. Through this process, you can capture relevant customer data points, such as the company’s size, its industry, the user’s job title, and more.
Reach New Small Business Customers through Performance Marketing
When it comes to marketing for net new small business customers, the old ways of marketing have become less feasible and far too expensive. When looking at your marketing dollars, it’s important to have transparency on where your budget is delivering you real business—and digital is the best place to achieve this.
Performance marketing is one area where we see such an opportunity for community banks to get ahead. Using performance marketing, banks can partner with third-party marketers to reach niche audiences to tell their stories through blogs and content.
It’s also a cost-effective tactic because it’s results-based, which means these marketers only get paid once they successfully refer a customer. At Fintel Connect, we work with many influencers and sites like these looking to showcase great product. Community banks can tap into the power of this channel to achieve budget-friendly, effective results.
Building a digital marketing formula means finding the right mix of variables to produce an optimal result. As you incorporate digital tactics into your marketing strategy, remember that each ingredient of your digital strategy is important and will produce a recipe for success that is unique to your bank.
Nicky Senyard is the CEO and founder of Fintel Connect, a performance marketing company and former participant in the ICBA ThinkTECH Accelerator program. Follow the company on LinkedIn.